Campaign for Dark Skies (CfDS)
The CfDS aims to preserve and restore the beauty of the night sky by campaigning against excessive, inefficient and irresponsible lighting that shines where it is not wanted nor needed.
Light should only shine where it is needed and wanted, and no-where else. Doing so is both easy and cost-effective – and with significant health and safety benefits.
Much wasted light shines up into the sky, causing the visual orange “smog” that hangs over towns and cities at night, intruding into the countryside, and destroying our view of a star-lit sky.
This “light pollution” is a visible and needless waste of resources, which contributes to global warming – hundreds of millions of pounds worth of electricity is wasted each year in the UK alone through poor lighting.
Astronomy is the most sensitive to the effect of light pollution, and so the the CfDS was set up as a sub-section of the British Astronomical Association, although their officers cover a wide range of people, from lighting engineers, politicians and astrophysicists.
To find out more please go to http://www.dark-skies.org/ or contact your local CfDS Officer here.
Map of light pollution in the UK (Credit: CPRE)
Great Leighs Racecourse
Recently the night skies of our local region have come under attack from a new source of immense light pollution. The Great Leighs Racecourse have installed massive floodlighting, illuminating the sky and disturbing a large part of Essex.
This has been documented on the following pages (and any new reports will be posted too):
24 October, 2008 at 8:00 am
There is a great article in this month’s National Geographic magazine highlighting the issues of global light pollution. It’s worth buying a copy and having a read.
There are also some great pictures of the milky way included.
27 October, 2008 at 8:37 pm
[...] Dark Skies [...]